


Love is the Word

by BlackKittens



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-06
Updated: 2019-02-06
Packaged: 2019-10-23 13:53:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17684732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackKittens/pseuds/BlackKittens
Summary: Maybe he was home.





	Love is the Word

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea what this is (yet again, I can't write for my own ships, smh). Also, I'm still confused as to whether the Vanitas in KH3 time traveled or somehow broke away from Ventus again, so I went with the latter.

"I'm glad you came home," Ventus said in greeting as he joined Vanitas on the highest roof of the Land of Departure. "I missed you."

There were so many wrongs with those two sentences, Vanitas thought, wordless to his counterpart.

The Land of Departure had never been his home. His was a vast graveyard, devoid of any life beyond his own and the old man's. He had never known this place, not outside of rare visits. The old man hadn't wanted him to know love, nor had he wanted Vanitas to kill his other half. This was not home to him.

_I missed you._ That was worse. Their relationship had never been positive, not even when Vanitas longed for his lighter half with every fiber of his being, longed to be together and whole again. Vanitas had always had the ability to feel what Ventus felt, and those joyful, loving feelings he got from his friends and master - they only made Vanitas jealous, enraged, eclipsed with sorrow. Then they met in person, and each encounter had contained mockery, anger, and selfishness. How could Ventus have missed him?

So many wrongs. Lies.

"You know," Ventus murmured, tilting his head to the side, "you're not the only one who can feel the other's emotions. You're full of scorn and disappointment; you don't believe me."

The revelation was news to Vanitas, but not surprising. Why should it be? There were one and the same, after all.

"Then you," he began slowly, voice gravel - it was startlingly hard to talk these days, after their second separation from their first, disjointed joining - "should know that you're still an idiot."

Ventus huffed out a laughed. "Is that so?"

Vanitas was in no mood for banter. "What do you want, Ventus?"

His smile was small, yet no less bright. "I want to welcome you back. You finally came back to me, without threatening anyone. I think that counts for something."

Vanitas tsked. "I only threatened you and your friends because I needed the X-blade. The geezer promised you and I would reunite under it, and I would finally stop existing on my own."

"I know that now," Ventus admitted, sobering up. "You were in a lot of pain before. When I was younger, I always wondered what that was...why I had this part of me in the back of my head that felt so miserable. I learned how to block it out by distracting myself, but that was your emotions. You just wanted it all to stop - that's why you fought us."

Vanitas said nothing. There was nothing to say; it was truth, clear as day.

"I don't know how to put us back together, the way you want to be," Ventus continued, "but I do know you don't have to feel that way anymore. He hurt you, Vanitas. He pit us against each other on purpose for one of his plans. We're not going to hurt you for that. I promise, no more pain from here on out."

Vanitas snorted, but inwardly, his heart...it warmed the slightest bit at his intentions. "Aren't you something else, brother?"

Ventus smiled. "You don't hate me as much as you used to."

He shrugged. "I think I hated your good fortune more than you. I just took it out on you is all. You don't hate me anymore either?"

"No, not anymore."

Vanitas closed his eyes. That had been about as much as he was expecting. Ventus' heart had been so much lighter since his awakening. He wondered how much of it had to do with his slumber. His own heart was - well, it wasn't lighter in the same sense, but rather, not as heavy. No, they didn't hate each other now.

"I missed you," he decided to tell him, "back then. When we were first separated, I missed you so terribly. I couldn't understand why we were apart, both as a heart and when he took you away. I asked myself so many times, why? Why couldn't we be together?"

"We are now, though," Ventus reminded him. "We don't have to be apart anymore. I know what you're talking about. I never understood why I felt incomplete, but I do now. I feel better next you."

Vanitas' heart warmed more, as it did his cheeks. He immediately went into the defensive, an old habit that refused to die.

"Do you know why we're like this, then, Mr. Know It All? How come we're so desperate to be together? Because we used to be one? Because I'm your missing part and you're my missing whole? Don't you hate that our heart has been shattered like this?"

It seemed more like babbling questions than true defense, but words tumbled out as they did anyway.

Ventus only shrugged. "Maybe. Probably. I don't know if I hate it. Like I said, I feel better next you. Better than I have in a long time, in fact. Before he separated us in the first place."

Vanitas perked up. "What does that mean?"

Ventus smiled widely, showing off his teeth. "It means you can call me brother all you want, but that's only the closest word you can think of to describe what you feel, right? Maybe we were taken apart for another reason, beyond Xehanort's plans. I want to get to know you more, Vanitas. I want to see how far that feeling can go, for both of us."

Vanitas stared at him dumbly. He was starting to get as stupidly cryptic as the others. When had he grown up that much, in his years of sleep?

Still, Vanitas' heart lurched at the offer.

No, brother wasn't the word he thought best described Ventus. They were neither brothers in the biological sense, nor in terms of closeness. But the longing he felt for him, the warmth he received from him, the way he made him feel better, too - what word did describe it?

"You sound like a sap. Did you pick this up from Sora?" he snipped.

"Well, he did feel something kinda similar for Kairi," Ventus told him with a grin. "Don't forget, I know what you're feeling. Want to give it a shot?"

Vanitas allowed a tiny smile upon his lips. Ventus should already know the answer.

Maybe he was home.


End file.
